Let My People Come

As much as I don't care for the world of film, the one thing I was very happy about in my one time pursuit of a theatre career was the study. Every actor has a choice. The word "no" could be said in infinite ways to reveal much of a character or his motivation. Subtext. Or it could just be a wank. Not all actor's choices are good ones. For a glaring example, please see Orlando Bloom's entire depiction of Balian in The Kingdom of Heaven. Wow. An elf does not a gladiator make. Strange, even to me, every single choice Simon Pegg selected in Shaun of the Dead was... ding, ding, ding... we have a winner.

Kicking, screaming, acting out, accusing, raging, becoming cold and unresponsive... This was not acting class. This was at home.
Subtext.
What's really the matter?

This question is the reason why Ack, the ex-husband, is still the best friend.

My darling Fatty and I were invited to accompany my future mother-in-law in an outdoor production of The Taming of the Shrew. Shakespeare in the Tent. It's Shakespeare in the Park... with a budget.

I read somewhere that Shakespeare's plays wouldn't be properly understood unless one reached a certain age. King Lear wouldn't have absolute relevance until one was 50. I hasten to add that it might not have ultimate relevance unless the reader or theatre goer was also male.

Romeo and Juliet was understood very early. I hid a boy in a closet. I jumped out of a second storey window to be with this boy. Our families hated the fact that we were together. When Fatty I go to fair Verona this fall, part of our European beer tour, I am going to visit the cemetery. Cemeteries are always on my travel itinerary whenever I'm fortunate enough to travel. I want to take pictures of tombstones with the names Capulet and Montague, if that's possible. Framed, I want them coexisting on the same wall, in a distance close enough for one violent hand to hold the other. Peace, a hated mortal word. Maybe they learned to embrace it in the afterlife.

Over a decade ago I worked at a wonderful restaurant where I received inordinate amounts of attention. At brunch a regular customer/ doorman from the club across the street had asked what the appeal of me was.

The Comrade: I don't know. Maybe it's an issue of the taming of a shrew.
I never studied this play in school. I'd never read it nor seen it performed before. Frankly I had it confused with A Midsummer's Night Dream. I was really looking forward to seeing Puck in action again.

No Puck.
Not even a urinal cake.
Only a child scorned by having her love usurped by her manipulative, sycophantic sister.
Favour cast aside by the one she learned her insatiable craving for acceptance.
A child treated as a commodity.
Where her worth is measured by her marriageability.
Must make her fit for society
By the removal of any spark or opinion she expresses.
Hurt.

If I wasn't sandwiched by 2 lovely people, I would have walked out prior to curtain's close. Upon the actor's bows and curtsies someone else was clapping my hands. I felt like a grimacing, maniacal monkey with cymbals.

Fatty's Mom: She didn't like it?

It's too close to home.
Too close to the world I live in;
A world of banishment if one can't tow the company line.
If one introduces shears to the company line.
No one seemed to understand.
Everyone was too busy being entertained.
Laughing, laughing.
At my expense.

I spent a lot of time crying over the weekend. I generally cry a lot. For the year I spent alone, crying was as routine as the morning coffee I'd prepare myself. It was a way to start my day. Sometimes I'd cry because I had a bad dream. Other times I cried because I felt so lucky. This weekend I cried all over Fatty because I felt orphaned and broken.

If you're a girl who ever had an older brother you were crazy about, Grave of the Fireflies will leave you in fetal position, bawling your eyes out for at least an hour afterwards. Well, this girl anyway. And this was my second viewing. A glutton for punishment, maybe. Or perhaps it was an unconscious reach-out, a catalyst for my own subtext.

Fatty: But now you have a new family. My family.
The Comrade: [choking on self-produced liquid] But I don't think they'll ever feel like my own family.
Fatty: Well, one day we'll have our own family. Together.

And then he held me and cried with me.
And for this action, Fatty has me for the rest of his life.


Months ago, Ack initiated a conversation that 5 other people, including myself, had on different occasions, mournfully expressed. The concept of Finding One's Own People.

It's the most lonely a person can feel.
Not being understood.
Where every mode of expression is met with equal expressions of incredulity, shock and horror.

Where are my People?

I met someone new this weekend.
Someone I suspect I'll see much of.

Ack, the ex-husband/best friend, has a new girlfriend.

Her name translates to Truth, Freedom and Beauty.
She has a remarkable Tree of Life tattoo covering her back. It protects her.
She's needed protection.
Not everyone has treated her well in her life.
She's small
But learned fierceness...
At least in work.
English is not her first language.
And you can tell.
Throughout her romantic life she'd been harboured as a secret.
A fetish.

But not anymore.

The Comrade: He'll never do that to you.

She draws amazing pictures that get made into realistic 3 dimensional forms. Film sets. Ack and I rode bikes through one of these forms years before we got to know Truth/Freedom/Beauty. We were introduced to her spirit that day. Her astral body. Not the lithe, sinuey, cumbersome one she uses in this mortal plain. She secretly wishes to be a cyborg.

The Comrade: Why?
Truth/Freedom/Beauty: So I can run faster and jump higher to save the world.
The Comrade: How do you save the world by running faster and jumping higher?
T/F/B: You can see things better from higher up.
Ack: Like kittens stuck in trees.

Last year at this time Ack and I desperately wanted to have love in our lives but it wasn't there. We plastered ourselves with self-pity, vocalised by repetitive mantras of We deserve love. Chugging beers. Faster and faster. We were certain it was going to happen to the other person, but really couldn't conceive of it happening for ourselves. What did that say about us? I started to look at toothpaste differently.

The Comrade: You use that much toothpaste each time?
Fatty: That's what you're supposed to use.
The Comrade: No. I use half of that.
Fatty: And how many cavities have you had in your life?
The Comrade: [hangs her head low]

I was taught to use 2 squares of toilet paper at a time and only a dot of toothpaste.


The year off has made Ack and I think about a great many things in regards to sharing a life with someone. It was very important for us to not have someone there to have love from, to be comforted by. After seeing a few different women over the course of 12 months, Ack discovered his litmus test for the potential of new love.

Hugging someone for 15 minutes straight without thinking about anything else, including sex.
Fatty agreed.

Ack: The last person I felt that with was you. That's how I knew.

And she shares his favourite movie: The Hunt for Red October. She gives him ethereal art books that only he would buy. They talk of worlds of spaceships, of flying, of life in pictures.

Ack and I sat across his kitchen's counter on Sunday. The same counter we'd licked our wounds from not having the kind of love we'd separated over. Telling him how I much I liked her, there was a moment of tearful revelation:

The Comrade: Oh, Ack. You found your people.

The Comrade: Does "Ack" mean anything in Japanese?
Truth/Freedom/Beauty: Oh yes. Bad, evil, Satan.
The Comrade: Yep. That's what I thought.